THE FOURTH WATCH (49 page)

"I want an identity, and as far as this person
knows, I could have gotten it anywhere. You won't be revealed as
the source." Walter in fact couldn't care less about this porn
freak and protection of his smut business, and would in fact turn
his name over to the prosecuting attorney in a heartbeat if it was
needed in court. But otherwise he would mostly keep it secret. You
never knew when he might need the guy again.

"Precious Package is what you called her in
your films", Walter said.

The change that came over Paulson was physical.
His face twitched, and his knees buckled and he let go of his
briefcase and sat slowly down into the leather chair behind his
desk. His face was white.

Walter looked at him in disbelief.
"What?"

"You're kidding me?"

"No I'm not. What?" Walter asked again. "Tell
me."

"I thought she was dead," Paulson
said.

"Well, she's not. Why did you think
that?"

Paulson shook his head. "Just the way she
disappeared," he said. "She was good, you know? I mean you can tell
when someone doesn't like it, or is getting sick of it or whatever,
but she was...I don't know...into it ... then, she was just gone.
We were hearing that she got caught up in a snuff deal- you know
what that is?"

"I do."

"Yeah, well, that's a different game. Very
different players! Never had any proof of that, but she just
vanished."

Walter nodded. "Well, anyway, we think she is
alive and well- and maybe mixed up in a homicide, so, ah, let's see
what you got on her - if you're willing to cooperate."

Paulson sat there for a minute, nodding, then
he got up and said, "I'm going to get the file myself. I'll be
right back." He started to the door and stopped. "Can I get you
anything, a Coke or something?"

Walter shook his head. "I'm good."

Paulson was back in a minute. He pulled a chair
up on Walter's side of his desk and put a manila file, maybe
half-an-inch thick, on the desk in front of him. "So, ah, this is
between us, right?"

"Right."

Paulson pushed the file over.

It was legal sized. 'Precious Package' was
typed in bold ink on a white sticker affixed to the folder tab.
There were some notes scribbled on the cover, phone numbers, names,
figures, -nothing.

Inside there was a stack of promotional photos,
mostly with her tits and ass on display, all pouty and sensual and
orgasmic. There were contracts setting out convoluted payment
schedules based on 'penetrations' and indicating what constituted a
'penetration' for the purposes of payment. Walter shook his head as
he paged through. Stapled to the back cover was an information
sheet. It had a name, Helena Carlais, and a social security number.
It also gave her height, weight, hair color, eye color, address,
phone number, modeling agency, their phone number, a comments box
at the bottom. In it someone had made a couple of notes. They said,
"hot on screen" and "careful, she's a doper".

Walter wrote it all down in his note book. When
he was done he pushed the folder back to Paulson. “Jeez, thanks
there, Sonny," he said. "You guys are a bunch of sick fuckers. No
shit of a lie, you pay them by the 'penetration'?"

33

Seattle, 1993

SAL'S MESSAGE WAS
heard loud and clear. Within ninety days of his
visit to the Hillsil home, RAT collapsed. Three of the four
under-bosses were dead. The forth approached Sal through
intermediaries, offering his loyalty and proposing integration of
the organizations. Sal jumped at the chance and within six months
former RAT operatives were distributing his product by rail
throughout the Great Northwest. More than four years ago now. Where
does the time go?

His years since returning from 'Nam had gone
better than anyone could have hoped - including the General. With
Los Angeles, the old scoundrel now had two major, well protected,
pipelines open into the states, and the territories that he
supplied were consistent, profitable and supported by legitimate
businesses that were able to wash vast amounts of money that could
be used openly in investment. Over time, the General had taken
control of all the western Triads, forged territorial agreements
with the fringe Mafia groups, and ascended to the dominant position
in heroin supply up and down the West Coast.

It was time to move east.

*****

THE SELECTION OF
the City of Worcester, Massachusetts as their base of
operations was not made without a great deal of deliberation. In
his usual, diligent way Sal researched everything carefully. The
larger cities had problems. Boston was controlled by two major
organizations - both very dangerous. A powerful Mafia Under Boss
held tight control over most of the city, and the surrounding
suburbs, with a network of loyal Capos and soldiers. Drugs,
gambling, prostitution, loan sharking and extortion all fit into a
finely woven web, with the Under Boss at the center drawing his
juice and keeping the peace.

The city's south sidewas controlled by an
equally powerful Irish Mob, operating out of the South Boston
Projects. This group was involved in hijacking, bank robbery,
contract murder, and controlled all the aforementioned activities
in their own territory. An uneasy peace existed between these two
groups. Blood was occasionally spilled between rival sub-groups,
but these skirmishes were quickly brought under control by the
heads of the organizations. Neither side wanted a war that would
badly disrupt business.

Both sides had infiltrated law enforcement.
Both sides had protection. Rumor was that the State Police could be
counted on by La Cosa Nostra, while the Irish Mob had local
protection on the Boston Police Force and curious connections to
the FBI. Chinatown was a mess of gangs with no titular head, all
paying protection to one mob or the other. Sal decided that it
would be a blood bath to try to break into that snake
pit.

Boston was controlled, as was Hartford,
Connecticut, out of Providence, Rhode Island, where the head of the
New England Mob sat. No serious secondary organizations operated in
either Hartford or Providence. Boston was a unique situation. The
Irish had been controlling South Boston since before the Italians
came across, and various attempts to overcome them down through the
years had proved bloody and futile. The Irish also had connections
to the old sod and the IRA, and no one in their right mind wanted
to mix it up with those bomb throwing lunatics. But the same was
not true in Hartford and Providence, where a secondary power would
absolutely not be tolerated. There were also no meaningful Chinese
populations to be tapped in either city.

New York was even worse. The waterfront, the
unions, the police and the politicians were all controlled by some
of the oldest, best-known and most powerful Mafia Families in the
country. The Families controlled the boroughs, had total authority
in their own areas and were protected among themselves by mutual
understanding. Even Chinatown belonged to one of the Families, and
although it was run a little differently, with all business being
conducted through Chinese gang operatives, at the top was the Don,
and any challenge to his authority was quickly dispatched with all
of the ritualistic horror that the Chinese respect.

All of this told Sal that he had to look at the
second tier cities to open up shop, and that's when the gem that
was Worcester, Massachusetts came into focus.

The Port of Worcester, as it was known in the
rail business, was located in the center of the state, forty miles
from the ocean. It was one of the few sub-tier cities in the
Northeast that handled double-stack containers. In other words, the
rail network to and from the city, was capable of receiving freight
cars stacked two high. These 'cars' were actually intermodal
shipping containers, that is, containers that were designed to fit
economically on ships and trains. The East Coast rail
infrastructure was the first built in the nation, long before the
concept of double-stack cars was developed, meaning that any of the
older routes, which utilized tunnels or bridges, would be unable to
accept the taller train cars. The Port of Worcester operated routes
that did not include such tunnels or bridges, and as a result
became an important East Coast rail distribution hub. Sal's plan
for Worcester was to bring the product into Long Beach or Seattle
in wave by containers, same as he was presently doing, get customs
to clear them in the West, then move the product across country to
Worcester by rail. For security reasons he wanted the operation to
be completely independent of the other two lines. Which meant that
he needed a new company that did enough business in Asia, and
received enough merchandise into Worcester through Seattle or Long
Beach, that, having once cleared customs in the West, would be
ignored here in the East. His research identified the ideal
candidate. A large East Coast concern that had a network of retail
outlets serviced by a common purchasing organization. Their
distribution network operated out of the Port of Worcester and they
owned warehouses throughout central Massachusetts. It was called
The Loading Dock, Inc.

The Port of Worcester was really an eighty-acre
rail yard on the southside of the city, operated by an independent
company called WPACO, in cooperation with a variety of local, state
and federal government agencies. The Worcester/Providence Alliance
Company rail depots were surrounded by a warren of privately owned
warehouses, government regulatory offices, weight-stations,
trucking yards and custom's sheds. The main focus of customs in
Worcester, however, was inspection of containers from "true"
regional seaports, like Boston.

Because of the horrid nature of Boston traffic,
its aging customs infrastructure that caused endless delays in
processing and the advent of 'just-in-time' purchasing standards,
Worcester, whose expansion into a modern, high tech rail 'Port'
began in the late eighties and was continuing unabated, became an
attractive alternative. Containers came off the ships in Boston
(and other regional seaports suffering the same types of problems)
and went straight to customs in Worcester by rail, where they were
cleared. Because of the massive trucking capacity in Worcester and
neighboring Shrewsbury, importers could much more rapidly clear
customs and move their goods. The yard operated 24/7/365. As a
result Customs primary focus was on this type of
traffic.

Which worked perfect for Sal.

The Loading Dock did enormous business in the
Pacific Rim, brought all their product through Customs in Seattle,
where they had a large receiving operation that redirected
containers for final destination on the east coast, and then
shipped it all through Worcester. They had caught Sal's eye in the
late eighties going through Seattle. Sal just had to put into play
the plan that had worked twice already. Infiltrate the organization
in the key spots and begin moving product. Establish a legitimate
base of operations in the city, set up a distribution network
surrounded by enforcement/protection people, and begin to spread
his tentacles into other second tier cities throughout New England.
It was all under way.

PART THREE

BARON RIDGE

34

AFTER MY WIFE ANNIE
and our unborn child were consumed by flames on a
cold night in December, 1998, I was overcome with a grief so
profound that I could barely take a breath without it catching in
my chest. Grief is not a single emotion, it is a brutal symphony:
of guilt and helplessness, pain and sorrow, emptiness and
loneliness, misery and heartache. Over time, grief transitions
seamlessly into depression, which has a much deeper and darker feel
to it. It's as if an invisible hand were working inside you,
clutching hard at your heart, slowly choking off your whole being -
physical, mental and spiritual. Your life becomes sluggish,
apathetic and mentally draining. Unlike grief, depression is a
place, a murky, desperate place, full of waning light and
shadows.

At first you go through the motions. I've just
got the 'blues,' you tell yourself, I'll shake it off. You eat and
go to work and call your friends back, and take care of life's
details. But then that all starts to slip away from you. You don't
shake anything off. Instead you are stalled by what seems to you to
be the uselessness of all you do. You wonder at the reasons that
people you meet might have for engaging you in conversation. Every
moment of everyday seems to contain a heavy burden within it, and
you are filled with such anxiety that you just want to lay down in
a closed room with the lights off and listen to your own mortal
clock ticking toward merciful silence. The fact that you have
obligations to attend to seems overwhelming, and increases your
stress, which magnifies your anxiety, driving you more and more
frequently into your darkened room, where you sit waiting for the
rain to stop falling inside your head.

Everything is diluted in you. Emotions once at
your center: love, hate, joy, sadness, passion; no longer have the
power to motivate you. Things that you used to enjoy become hard
work. You find yourself living in a hopeless spiral of waking hours
and sleeping hours, both shallow and erratic, neither satisfying.
You have a deep sense that you will never be able to overcome the
tidal forces working inside you, and one day you find yourself
longing for the snug, quiet of the grave.